KINDER, Kuche, Kirche — not lesser-known Kardashian sisters, but Nazi ideals for women. 

Heinrich Himmler reduced these “three Ks (“children, kitchen, church”) even further; women had only to “be beautiful and to bring children into the world,” opined the man with a face reminiscent of a partly baked potato.

The Nazis were never consistent in their responses to the “woman question.” While publicly encouraging only married motherhood, giving women incentives to marry, they also told the SS and German military to impregnate as many “Aryan” women as possible, in or out of wedlock — a policy Himmler personally pursued with his mistresses. 

Nazi ideology also declared women shouldn’t work outside the home, even as the Reich benefited from cheap female labour. The number of women in the German workforce actually increased by more than two million between 1933 and ’39.

When expedient, the Reich would ditch the idea of domesticised femininity completely, directly recruiting women to its war effort after 1943. 

What the Nazis never did, however, was to directly attack feminists: though they hardly needed to. 

The umbrella organisation for the German women’s rights movement, Federation of German Women’s Associations (Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine/BDF), voluntarily disbanded in 1933 rather than submit to state control — which would have meant turning in Jewish members, among other forced compliances. 

We no longer have to speculate about what the Nazis’ attitude to the BDF might have been had women not taken this pre-emptive decision. 

The heirs of fascism around the world are now openly taking aim at feminism, with increasing audacity. And the left must respond. 

In Spain, far-right party Vox campaigned successfully on an explicitly anti-feminist ticket. It is now attempting to roll back women’s rights, including the strong protections Spanish law offers against domestic violence. 

If you had thought no political faction would think protecting women from violence was a bad thing, think again — Vox claims doing so discriminates against men.

In Poland, the offices of feminist and women’s rights organisations have been raided, and those who work for them subjected to smears and political attacks.

In Germany, representatives of the far-right party AfD said recently that “natural selection” prevented women from being competent law-makers. Eugenic ideas in Germany — what could go wrong? 

Elsewhere, what has been termed “reproductive fascism” is back in a big way. It comes sometimes in the guise of help for indigenous families, as in Hungary, where Viktor Orban has announced that women with three or more children will get help with childcare costs, and subsidies to help them buy cars. Mothers of four or more will be completely exempted from income tax. Lest we mistake the intent behind this superficial benevolence, Orban has declared migration to be “surrender,” and announced: “We want Hungarian children.” So far, so lebensborn. 

In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro had no sooner assumed office than he closed the government’s human rights department, replacing it with one for “Family Values.” 

In an attempt to have it both ways, he put a woman in charge — but right-wing, anti-abortion evangelical pastor Damares Alves, who in turn appointed Sara Winter, formerly of pressure group Femen, who claims Christianity has since “cured” her feminism.  

This pales into insignificance, however, compared to Alves’s most astonishingly random attack on perceived left-wing decadence. 

In 2013, Alves informed the world that the Dutch Labour Party government was recommending parents “sexually stimulate” the genitalia of infants from seven months old. The Dutch were bemused and infuriated in equal measure.  

In the US, Donald Trump has also employed the double-edged sword of appointing to high office a woman who is at the same time really terrible: at the helm of the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission sits Rebecca Kleefish, an ultra-conservative former TV anchor who advocates women’s subservience to their husbands. 

Commentator Afua Hirsch summed up this tactic: “Such appointments must be great fun for populist misogynist men. You … kill two birds with one stone. First you weaponise anti-women’s rights women against other women, thereby infuriating feminists — who hate you anyway — while simultaneously reducing initiatives that were designed to promote gender equality to a laughing stock, which serves your interests … nicely.”

In Britain, too, we are seeing feminists picked out as targets — neofascist nuisances connected to the inaccurately named Democratic Football Lads Alliance (DFLA) harangued puzzled attendees at a recent Women’s March in London.

Events in the US show just how toxic the combination of misogyny and far-right ideology being normalised by the political class can be. 

At least 18 people have been murdered in the US by “incels,” men who believe they are “involuntarily celibate” because women are unfairly withholding sex from them, and often espouse far-right views. 

In 2014 Elliot Rodger, a self-styled “incel” and university student who railed online against interracial relationships, killed six people, specifically targeting a sorority whose members he had deemed the most attractive at his college, “the kind of girls I’ve always desired but was never able to have.” 

Rodger was hailed as a hero by Alek Minassian, another self-professed incel who drove a van into a crowd of people in Toronto in April last year, killing 10. 

Scott Paul Beierle, who murdered two women in a yoga studio in Florida last November, also cited Rodger as an inspiration. Beierle posted online videos in which he called women of colour disgusting, and suggested planting land mines to stop people trying to cross the US-Mexican border.

The left has yet to respond to all of this in as systematic a way as is needed. 

I’ve spoken about this rising threat for some time and often met the response that this is nothing new, and therefore doesn’t require a specific challenge: “Hitler wasn’t a feminist, you know!” (while this is undeniable, I noted with interest that Adolf knock-off Tommy Robinson is, at least according to Ukip admirer Gerard Batten, who jaw-droppingly compared Robinson to Sylvia Pankhurst.) 

However, it is true that there is a new and worrying aspect to far-right attacks on women, which we ignore at our peril — it has often been said that societies which want to curtail the rights of their citizens invariably start with women as well as minority groups. 

The good news is that women are fighting back now as they have always done — they have ever been among the most fearless advocates, and indeed early adopters, of anti-fascism. 

Many fought in the Spanish civil war, and it was working-class former seamstress and communist leader Dolores Ibarruri, “La Pasionaria,” who coined the Republican battle cry: “No pasaran!” (“They shall not pass!”).

I’ve written before in this paper about London anti-fascists like the estimable Beatty Orwell, still with us and still political at 101, who got into fights with Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts as a 15-year-old schoolgirl on the streets of Bethnal Green. 

Hundreds of women, including Orwell and brilliant union organiser Sarah Wesker, turned out against the British Union of Fascists at Cable Street in October 1936, as well as in Leicester and Manchester. 

Russian-born Noor Inayaat Khan, from an Indian Muslim family and an anti-imperialist, had every reason not to aid Britain’s fight against fascism in World War II, yet this retiring, thoughtful children’s author chose to put herself in extreme danger. 

Khan was the first female radio operator in Occupied France, and well aware those in this role had a life expectancy of six weeks. She survived for months, even with the Nazis latterly scouring the city for her. 

She could well have lived had she not refused orders to return home after the rest of her operating circle had all been caught by the Gestapo, saying she couldn’t abandon her post as the allies’ sole remaining link. 

Even after her arrest she made two nearly successful escape attempts, and died having given no information under extreme and long-term torture, with the word “Liberte” on her lips. 

In Germany too, women resisted. Seventy six years ago last month, student Sophia Scholl, anti-Nazi activist with the White Rose non-violent resistance group, was executed for distributing anti-war leaflets. She was 21. 

Fighting what have been called the last battles of the war, on the streets of Britain against, incredibly, an immediately resurgent fascism, women were active members of the Jewish 43 Group. 

Doris Kaye went undercover for them, befriending senior fascists, rising through the ranks of the British Union of Fascists herself, and all the while reporting back at steady stream of information, including on meeting dates and venues, which allowed the 43 Group to constantly confront and disrupt fascist organisation. 

With women the world over once again facing the beginnings of neonazi persecution, we should be thinking urgently about organised resistance, and the appointment of women’s officers to anti-fascist organisations. 

This would be the best possible tribute to the brave international women of anti-fascism, past and present, on International Women’s Day. 

Dr Louise Raw is the author of Striking a Light (Continuum) and organiser of the annual Matchwomen’s Festival, which will this year focus on women opposing racism and fascism, with speakers including shadow minister for disabled people Marsha De Cordova and joint secretary of Unite Against Fascism Sabby Dhalu. The event takes place on Saturday June 29 in Bow, east London. Tickets are available via Eventbrite.